Bubblegum Crisis Mind Strike
by Totem Of Storms
Summary: A boy finds out some interesting things about his mother and her friends; they're the Knight Sabres, and they've got an offer for him.
1. Chapter 1

Bubblegum Crisis: Mind Strike

**Adieus High School, Thornlow Ridge District, Mega-Tokyo**

**Friday 13th June 2042**

English lessons were boring.

Raphael Mackenzie had never found them to be otherwise in all of the years that he had been at school. Not that he was bad at it; he daydreamed constantly, rarely paid attention to the teacher, but was the top scored student in the class. Even daydreaming he managed to pick up on mistakes that the teacher made in grammar and pronunciation.

This lesson was only different in what he was doing instead of paying proper attention to the class; his maths homework had taken him longer than he had hoped after he had skipped doing it last night when his parents were both out. He was easily going to get it finished, but the teacher of course knew what he was doing and kept asking him questions.

He was trying to put together one final set of equations, while debating pointing out the mistake that the teacher had just made, when the principle entered the classroom.

"Mr Mackenzie," she said sternly after excusing herself to the teacher. "Your mother is in reception, waiting to take you to the doctor's appointment. In future you will please make sure that you are in reception in time to be picked up for such things rather than wasting our time chasing you like this."

Raph blinked in surprise at that. He didn't have a doctor's appointment that he knew of, but it was unlikely that anyone would have made a mistake like this about whether it was him or not that they meant; two kidnappings five years ago had seen to the introduction of a subtle but thorough barrage of checks against anyone turning up claiming to be a parent.

"I'm sorry," he replied, stammering slightly. Someone at the back of the class giggled at his nervous tone of voice and the unpleasant attention he was receiving and he felt himself starting to blush in response. As a couple more people joined in, not quite loud enough to be picked out of the class, his embarrassment intensified. As he gathered his books and swept them off the desk into his bag the projector overhead flickered for a second. Raph gritted his teeth, forcing himself to calm down; some of the stuff that he had learnt from his mother about centring came back to him and he took a deep breath, forcing his pulse to slow down.

He followed the principle back to the reception area. His mother was indeed waiting, looking impatient. "There you are," she scolded. "Next time you'd better remember to come in time; we're going to be late as it is now."

Raph waited until everyone else was out of hearing range before answering softly. "I don't have an appointment. You didn't tell me about one anyway..."

"I know," his mother replied, startling him somewhat as she slipped from anger into a calm and professional tone without any apparent effort; he hadn't realised that she could act like that. "But I needed some way of getting you out of there. All I know is that it's some kind of emergency. Apparently you'll get a genuine doctor's note out of it though, so you won't be in trouble for it."

Raph frowned as they both climbed into his mother's car. It was a pale green Lotus Sunfire, less than two years old and kept in very good condition thanks to the attentions of one of his mother's friends. Raph didn't get on with Mackie as well as his mother did; the older man was more interested in machines than Raph was, tinkering with cars and motorbikes every chance he got. He kept the Sunfire in top condition though, which Raph appreciated.

"How are you going to get a doctor's note for me if I don't have an appointment? They check those sorts of things at school; they'll work out it's a fake."

"Not if it's from your regular doctor, and he confirms that you were there being examined," his mother pointed out with a grin before turning professional again. "I wish I knew why we were doing this though..."

Raph paused, looking at his mother in the way that his first father had taught him. The set of her eyes and lips, the tensions in the muscles in her face and arms, the slightly sloppy way that her headband was on which suggested a quicker change from her working leotards into her own clothes than normal. She was worried, even a bit scared. But she was serious about not knowing what was going on.

Sitting back, Raph watched the city go by as they rushed through it, heading for... He tried to guess based on his knowledge of the city. It was hard; somewhere as big as Mega-Tokyo, you needed to work out likely routes between places rather than just base the guess on a direction. Going by this route, at this time of day... The busy parts of the city that they were heading into held too many possibilities for him to make a reasonable guess, but as his mother went past or around various corners he began to narrow things down somewhat.

When they pulled up in the garage of one particular building after nearly half an hour of driving, Raph was both satisfied that he had worked it out correctly, and extremely confused as to why they were there. His mother didn't help matters much in this regard by smiling faintly at his expression and heading for the door to the stairs that would take them up to the apartment at the top of the building.

Just as they reached the door there was a screech of motorbike tyres and Raph turned in time to see one of his mother's friends slide her motorbike into the garage and park it alongside the scooter that was already in there.

"Linna," the driver said, removing her helmet and shaking brown hair out as she did. "You brought the kid along I see."

"Yeah; Sylia told me that Raph needed to be here. I don't know any more than that."

"Well, as long as I get a good explanation for why I was pulled out of a rehearsal like that," Priss grumbled as she locked down the motorbike. "We've got a big show coming up this weekend and the guys need the practise."

"Hey, I just pulled Raph out of school to get him here," his mother pointed out, holding the door open for Priss and Raph and then following them into the building. "So it had better be urgent."

Raph kept quiet; Priss had never seemed to like him for some reason, and he'd learnt early on not to antagonise her. She scowled at him over her shoulder before starting up the stairs three at a time. "Should I wait..."

"No," his mother said with a sigh. "Sylia wants you there, so Priss will have to put up with you for a while." Her expression changed as if something had occurred to her. "Oh... That would..." She cast a decidedly nervous look at Raph before gesturing for him to lead the way.

More confused than ever, Raph headed up the stairs to the apartment.

Sylia's apartment was of a fair size, taking up the whole of the top floor of the building; she owned the entire building that Raph knew for certain, which was impressive enough in such a high rent area without taking into account the five or six neighbouring buildings that he merely suspected that she owned. The place still had a new feel to it from the recent repairs following the Sky-Hopper attacks on the area two months ago; Raph still wasn't sure that he liked the new look, though Sylia was clearly very happy with it.

As Raph entered he found that Priss wasn't the only other person to be invited; Nene and Mackie were already there, along with his father. Nene and Mackie were sitting together on a sofa; normally they would have been snuggling a bit, but both of them seemed a bit nervous about something at present. His father on the other hand looked worried, but less specifically so.

"Dad? What's going on?"

"I'm hoping that Sylia will be telling us shortly," his father replied with a shrug. "She said that she was going to be getting some of the data to show us."

"And I've got it," Sylia said as she entered. "Linna, Priss, Raphael," she said, nodding to each person in an abrupt and formal greeting as she said their name. "I'm glad you could all make it. Please sit down and I'll explain why you're here."

Raph had never got on with Sylia; in fact out of this strange group that had assembled here Nene was the only one he got on with aside from his parents. Sylia was too intense, Priss couldn't stand him for some reason, Mackie was just too interested in messing with cars and bikes... The entire group had an oddly focused edge to them, so disparate and yet held together somehow by a common cause, and unless you knew that cause you could never understand why they didn't end up killing each other sooner or later.

"In view of what happened last night I think that we all need to hear about what I have found out. I've asked Linna to bring Raphael into this because this concerns him a great deal. I think that it might be time for some home truths to be brought out," she added with a significant look at his parents.

Raph felt his mother's hands reach out and clasp his own as his father put an arm around his shoulders. "Sylia," his mother said, almost pleading, "you promised us-"

"I promised that you could tell him in your own time, or not at all, as you saw fit, provided that it didn't conflict with the safety of the team. I believe that, as of last night, our safety might well be threatened by this remaining a secret; decisions might need to be made quickly and Raph will need to be properly informed in order to make them. I can allow you to tell him in your own way if you prefer, or I can tell him for you, but he does need to know now."

Raph looked between his parents; his mother was looking decidedly unhappy about this, his father stoic, but still worried. Both of them looked undecided about whatever they were talking about, and Raph felt compelled to put his bit in.

"Look, I know that I'm adopted," he pointed out. "That's what people normally get excited about like this; we went over that about six years ago. I was fine with it."

Sylia smiled faintly. "Yes. And in that time you've shown a great deal of restraint about where you came from; you've never asked who your biological parents were."

"I remember that I had a weird upbringing," Raph admitted. "I was being taught stuff a lot... I know it was damned odd."

"It was more than odd," Sylia pointed out. "We need to tell you where you really come from." She glanced at his mother and father for a second before sighing. "This may appear somewhat indirect to begin with, however I assure you that it is all relevant. Do you know where your mother was last night?"

"Uh... Shouldn't you be asking if she knows where I was?" Raph asked cautiously.

"Normally," Sylia admitted. "But you weren't out in the middle of a boomer rampage."

For a moment there was silence in the room as Raph took that in. One reason that he and Sylia didn't get on was the way that she could so easily hide herself from him; his usual techniques for reading people were somewhat at a loss when faced with someone with Sylia's level of self-control. In this case though, despite obviously restraining herself a great deal, she was obviously being serious.

"Uh... Mum?"

"We were," his mother admitted with a faint smile. "All four of us."

"Four?"

"Priss, Nene and I were out there as well," Sylia explained. "Mackie was driving the van for us. Your father was covering a story on behalf of the Tinsel Town Observer, but he was able to put in a good word for us in the end."

Everyone paused, watching his reactions. Raph thought quickly, wondering what they were telling him. Four women, in the middle of a boomer rampage, with another guy on backup in a van and his father giving them a positive spin for the news reports...

"Are you trying to tell me that you're the Knight Sabres?" Raph asked sceptically. "That's a bit... I dunno..."

"Well you keep commenting that I have a lot of combat experience for a dance instructor," his mother pointed out with a nervous smile. "And you've been pointing out for years that I shouldn't be coming home with odd injuries like that from an evening out."

Raph looked around the group. They were watching him expectantly, but clearly not with the expectation of springing a joke on him. Priss was the easiest to read since she rarely bothered to hide her feelings about him; had this been some kind of joke she would have had a cruel smile or a smirk, but instead she was scowling, clearly upset about a secret being revealed like this.

"Okay... So... Why are you telling me this? I mean, I don't believe it," he added hastily, "but you all seem to so I'll play along a while."

Sylia treated him to a smile. "When in doubt, fish for more details," she said approvingly. "It's true; we are the Knight Sabres. We're a group of mercenaries who use the funding from our paid operations to allow us to take on boomer rampages and the illegal activities of mega-corporations like GENOM. We like to think that we're making the world a better place by our actions, though we all have our reasons for doing this so it isn't entirely altruistic.

"We haven't told you this before because, frankly, we didn't know if you could keep it a secret. If our identities get out then we face arrest, blackmail, possibly even death, and trusting that secret to you wasn't something that we were happy about. Now though...

"As I said, circumstances have changed, as of last night."

"What changed Sylia?" Priss asked grumpily. "I didn't see anything that had anything to do with the kid."

"There was," his mother said quietly. "Last night, some of those boomers..."

"I think," Sylia interjected, "that Raphael needs some explanation of where he comes from in order to make sense of last night..."

**Lady 633 Building, Mega-Tokyo**

**Tuesday 20th December 2033**

"We have a new job," Sylia explained to the assembled Knight Sabres. "I know that we're still recovering from the attack on the ADP building, but this looks like it should be relatively easy."

There were no murmurs of dissent from the team, so Sylia continued. "The job is a raid on a GENOM storage facility. What makes this unusual is that it is a GENOM subsidiary that has hired us for the job."

"Well that's a load of bull for a start," Priss said with a snort. "Do they honestly expect us to fall for that?"

"Nene and I have both checked this out," Sylia assured her. "There is no indication of a trap; the facility has been in the hands of a rival subsidiary for several years and officially unused for most of that time. They have determined however that there is some kind of unofficial research going on there and they want to get hold of it for themselves.

"Normally a company like Toran Processing would work through the management for something like this. In this case however they seem to believe that the management doesn't know about this or wouldn't allow them access to it if they did. Their next option would be to send in their own people to lay claim to it. This won't work though as Toran Processing handles production of biomechanical nerve fibres and related constructs. This means that they don't actually have anything to use to send on a mission like this aside from mercenaries like us.

"They have identified areas of the facility that are in use and have provided a list of data and materials that they believe can be found in there. They have already agreed to pay five million for us to simply investigate, with another five million on completion and various bonuses depending on the exact materials we can retrieve. Such items include electronic research data, hard copies, and materials such as equipment and samples. Total payment available appears to be twenty million, maybe higher."

Linna whistled softly, looking impressed. "That's good money."

"What kind of defences would there be?" Priss asked. "Sounds like there should be some at least."

"They will be some," Sylia agreed. "Unfortunately a facility like this, apparently being run as a rogue operation, is impossible to keep track of properly; as Doctor Yoshida proved, several dozen boomers going missing is simply a rounding error in GENOM's daily totals. How big a rounding error we will encounter this time is anyone's guess, but we believe that it will be limited; a handful of boomers, probably of a standard design.

"We'll take the motoroids along for the added speed when we leave; we may also need them for transporting things. Nene, you'll need your hacking equipment and large data storage units. Mackie will stand by with the utility suit in case he needs to become involved. The rest of us will handle physical equipment and other similar items. Any questions?"

The facility was in darkness when they arrived; recon passes during the day had confirmed that there were no obvious defences, patrols, or other signs of occupation. Checks had indicated that there was power present in the building, but only minimal amounts. Water was found to be in a similar state.

Sylia approached the main fence through a gap between two piles of rubble. Ahead of her Nene was making heavy going of it, but still moving forwards; after this long her concern was more for keeping her hardsuit clean than a need for stealth, but despite that it was hard going. Nene had to lead the way though; her ELINT hardware was the best of the team's and Sylia needed her up front in case there were any sensors to pick up.

Behind her came Linna and Priss. Neither of them had any trouble with keeping up or keeping quiet, though Priss had objected to going in quietly like this; the singer had wanted to bust in through a possible accessway in the roof, but Sylia had overruled her. Going in like this would mean that they had a better chance of getting in without being spotted until it was too late to stop them.

They made it to the wall with no trouble and Nene set to work hacking the lock on the door; on the outside it looked easy, even purely mechanical.

"There's two separate layers of electronics below that though," she explained as she worked. "You trip the first by just opening the door manually. But the second is guarding the first one in case anyone tampers with that. I've got to bypass both layers at once in order to avoid setting off any alarms."

"How long Red?" Sylia asked. Even using the encrypted channels at this point would be risky, especially given the level of sophistication that was being displayed by the defences. Actual voices, with distortion built in by the helmet speakers and code-names was the only secure way of communicating.

"Another minute," Nene replied absently, tightly focused on her HUD and the data flowing back and forth between that and the two locking systems.

It was less than a minute, though it was clear from Priss' stance that she wouldn't agree, before the door opened, allowing the four of them to get in.

"I'll have to close and relock it behind us," Nene warned. "I'll be able to get us out in seconds on the way back, but it'll trip and alarm sooner or later if we leave it open."

"We can just blow it open on the way back," Priss commented.

"Only if it can't be helped," Sylia instructed. "Let's get moving." Her HUD brought up a map of the building, the guido in her Hardsuit keeping it oriented and throwing up waypoints to indicate the route that she had previously marked out to follow.

The place was dusty and mucky around this area, but from the level of sophistication in the power lines and so forth that were laid out, Sylia guessed that this was just under use rather than natural decay. Certainly once they passed the first set of doors the whole place became much cleaner and neater; the walls and floor were more than just tidy, they were almost spotless.

"It's almost like being in a hospital or something," Linna commented, her tone somewhat awed. "Why would they keep it so clean?"

"Keep it quiet Green," Sylia warned. "Red, anything?"

"Nothing so far," Nene replied. "There are sensors around, but nothing is actually responding to us; I can't even pick up any electrical activity in response to us speaking, so I don't think there are even microphones around here."

"Interesting," Sylia said softly. This wasn't exactly what she had expected. "Notify me if you pick anything up. For now, we keep moving, and keep quiet."

Silence served them well, seemingly. The four of them worked their way slowly through the building, Sylia and Nene alert, Linna cautious, Priss getting steadily more irritated by the minute.

Eventually, after another ten minutes, they found one of the things that they were looking for.

Nene brought them up short just before a corner, seeming to concentrate. Sylia paused as well, then bumped up the gain on her helmet's external microphones. Audio discrimination and mapping software kicked into action, taking the plan of the building and overlaying the sounds on it, plotting probable sources.

Even as the image resolved on her HUD, Nene turned and flashed a couple of hand signs. Obligingly the HUD provided a translation, despite Sylia being able to read the screen and understand what was being said anyway.

"Two targets. Non-hostile?"

Sylia considered the question. Nene hadn't indicated the targets to be friendly, which was smart. But Sylia could hear the two of them as well as Nene could; they sounded like children, and young children at that. She couldn't honestly work out what they would be doing somewhere like this though. Most likely they had found their way in somehow and were just playing around. But their presence could spoil everything.

Gesturing for Nene to step back, Sylia crept up to the corner, clenching her fist and extending a nano-fibre wire around the corner. The wire flexed and bent at her command, clinging tightly to the wall as she directed it around the corner and pulled up the resulting image on her HUD.

Two children. They were playing all right, but under the care of two boomers; they were an odd model, one that Sylia didn't recognise except vaguely. They were, she guessed, nanny boomers, a relatively new idea that GENOM had developed. These didn't look like the designs that she had seen though; they looked slightly cruder, as if someone had taken the beta version and put that into production before the final aesthetics had been applied to the production model.

She considered for a moment, and then one of the children, the boy, turned away from her. Both of the children were wearing some kind of one-piece black, full length jumpsuit of a fairly exotic looking material; she couldn't place it, but it was clearly designed to be grown into, and possibly resized along with that. It was the logo on the back of the boy's jumpsuit that caught her attention; she'd only been able to see the smaller version on the front before and the fibre-optic wire didn't give good visuals on something that small.

The logo was picked out in silver and showed three pairs of stylised wings coming off a central figure. Below the image was a name: Metatron. She drew in a sharp breath at the sight of it, and focused her gaze onto the girl that the boy was playing alongside.

Sure enough, when the back of the girl's jumpsuit became visible, Sylia recognised the name that was written there: Uriel.

"Damn it," she muttered, withdrawing the fibre-wire and gesturing for Nene to link them all up. Wires extended from the red Hardsuit, allowing each of them to communicate over the wire without being overheard.

"This makes things awkward," Sylia declared. "There is a boy and girl around the corner, playing with what appear to be nanny boomers. The problem is that the jumpsuits that they are wearing... We were given the name of three pieces of research material specifically to get out. The boy has Metatron written on his jumpsuit, and the girl is apparently Uriel. Both of those are names of the research materials..."

The other three tried to exchange looks, something that was almost comical to see when everyone still had their helmets down. Non-verbal cues were easy to pick up on though, and Sylia held up a hand to quash Priss' reaction before it could develop too far. "This changes things. I don't know what these children are doing here, but I didn't sign up for kidnapping. Red, I need you to get into whatever records we can find ASAP and find out what is going on."

"We've got to find somewhere for me to access information from first," Nene pointed out. "Can we get past them?"

"If we're careful," Sylia said slowly. "There's an alternate route around if we go back down this corridor. We can head around and back into what I'm hoping is a central area; I was hoping to approach it this way, but apparently we don't have a choice."

The alternate route proved to be just as clean and well lit as the original one. This one though, ended in a control room of sorts; Sylia wasn't sure but it looked like a security-office and medical centre combined together. The effect was odd with medical equipment and high-tech security systems, apparently using the same set of monitors.

"This looks promising," Nene declared, heading for the main console and moving as if to sit down in the office chair that was in front of the main screen before remembering herself. She squatted somewhat and then locked the joints in her Hardsuit's lower half, giving herself some support rather than having to hold herself in that position by brute force. "Definitely promising," she declared after a few seconds. "Minimal security as well; I guess we were never meant to get this far."

"No, you weren't," declared a voice sharply from one of the other corridors. Sylia turned sharply, her cannon coming up sharply to point at the source of it.

Low-light filters kicked in automatically in response to the darkness in the corridor. Automatic sensor routines pulled up scans for anomalous infra-red or magnetic signatures, comparing everything to known weapon profiles. A limited hard-object scanner came online, mapping out anything with a density greater than normal Human flesh.

Only once the scans returned negative for immediate threats (Sylia took a fraction of a second to highlight the 9mm pistol in the jacket pocket and mark it as not of immediate danger), did Sylia allow herself to focus on what the figure looked like.

He was Japanese, about her height. Black hair had been cut neatly, and his clothes were arranged tidily, reasonably fresh and clean. His face was perhaps a shade more angular, maybe a bit taller, than Sylia might have considered normal for pure Japanese heritage, but it wasn't out of the ordinary. His age, she pegged roughly at mid-fifties, maybe early sixties allowing for his apparent wealth and the rejuvenant treatments available to those with suitable money.

Her assessment took barely a second, after which she spoke calmly. "Red, carry on. Blue, Green, watch the exits and make sure nothing sneaks up on us." She straightened, keeping her cannon charged but not bothering to aim it; against an un-armoured, non-augmuented Human like this man, even a near-miss against the wall would be fairly devastating at this range. "You own this... Facility?"

"In so much as anyone owns it," the man replied sharply, his gaze flickering in irritation to Nene's back as she worked on the computer. "I hardly expected any visitors..."

"We're not exactly visiting," Sylia replied. "We're being paid quite a lot to obtain research data from this facility." She paused. "We're also being paid to obtain research materials... Though having seen that two of those materials appear to be children, I'm reconsidering that part of the deal."

The man gave a grunt of something that might have been amusement, or might have been annoyance. "Well, at least that much is right about the stories about the Knight Sabres," he said, moving to one side and settling down against a chest of drawers. "If you were working for GENOM then I'd have been genuinely worried."

"We don't work for GENOM," Sylia assured him. "You?"

"I'm on their payroll," he replied with a faint smile. "But they're far more use to me than I am to them, even allowing for the three major patents that they have from my work. May I ask who you are working for, if not GENOM?"

"A subsidiary," Sylia replied. "They seem to think that your research will be useful to them somehow. I'm intrigued to know though, what kind of research you are engaged in that requires young children."

"I'm making a new future," he replied with a genuine smile. "I'm happy to share the research notes of course; since it's you and I don't think I can do much to stop you, I won't bother trying. I hope that they get some creative use out of my notes, though I don't think that it will happen. As long as you leave the notes intact on that machine and leave the children alone, I don't care what you do with it."

Sylia was going to comment on that suspiciously generous offer; it sounded too good to be true, even for a man facing down four suits of powered armour. The abrupt flicker in the lights cut her off though an instant before the sound of an explosion echoed through the building.

"What the!" Priss turned sharply, her rail-spike launcher springing to life. "Someone just broke in."

"Can you tell who?" the man asked sharply, looking up at the screens which had previously shown diagnostics and a couple of images from randomly placed cameras, but which were now showing a steadily increasing wall of snow.

Nene held a hand up next to the side of her helmet. "I've got audio discrimination working on it... Jump-jets, lasers and low-yield beam weapons... 85% probability it's C-55s, probably with at least one or two BU-13s along for the ride," she declared.

"GENOM," the man cursed sharply. "Who else? I must get the children out of here," he declared, heading for one of the consoles.

"Agreed," Sylia said. "Red, keep working on that data. Blue, stay here. Green, I need you to scout around a bit; don't engage but see what's going on."

"Gotcha," Linna said as she bounded off.

"I've got contact with the nanny boomers," the man suddenly declared. "They're all heading for the back door. If you can offer me some protection, you're welcome to use it as well."

"You're awfully free about making an alliance like this," Sylia remarked casually.

"Fortune or fate has landed me with greater defences than I ever expected to produce myself at my moment of greatest need. I won't lie; I need help right now. But I can pay if it helps at all; I'm not without resources, as the presence of this base should attest."

Sylia nodded. "Lead the way. Green, we're leaving. Head back to us or head out some other way; make sure we're not followed."

"I'm on it," Linna replied after a couple of seconds. "I'm going to have to head out on my own; I think a C-55 spotted me back there."

"Understood. Be safe."

Sylia, Nene and Priss followed as the man led them through the corridors for a moment. The sounds in the building were distorted, echoes coming to them oddly, making it hard to judge how close the invading boomers really were.

Eventually they came around a corner, finding themselves in a long corridor. To the left was a very solid looking doorway, while to the right was the longer expanse of the corridor, stretching a good thirty metres. Windows on one side overlooked what had to have once been the factory floor before the apparent renovation, while the other appeared to have offices.

At the far end of the corridor two children, Metatron and Uriel, both appeared, guided by their nanny boomers. They were crying, clearly scared of what was going on. When they saw the man though they both started running forwards to him, crying out for their father; to Sylia there was something very powerful about that image, watching the two small children putting so much faith in their father. She wished that she had known her own father long enough to have known such feelings...

The glass wall leading onto the factory floor exploded as three C-55s boosted up from the floor below, smashing through the wall and into the corridor. Two of them turned, picking the Knight Sabres as viable opponents while the other turned and fired down the corridor at the nanny boomers.

"NO!" the man cried out, trying to rush forwards to his children and being rewarded with a very short, sharp blast to the chest from a laser.

Sylia and Priss both returned fire immediately, taking out the boomer's AI core and head in a small barrage of shots. The second one, partly shielded by its companion in the narrow corridor, grabbed the now-dead hulk and hurled it at them, following the attack up with a couple of shots of its own.

Sylia ducked under the remains, hearing Priss and Nene curse as it caught them; this wasn't a new tactic unfortunately, but it was one that it was hard to prepare for.

Not willing to allow the boomer time to think, Sylia rolled to her feet, firing her cannon at point-blank range into its chest. The AI core hidden away within was shattered instantly, all of its redundancies being lost.

Pushing the remains of the boomer away from her, Sylia took aim at the third boomer, firing before she was entirely ready. She winged it, but nothing more, before the entirely corridor was shaken by a trio of rockets launched from below; the BU-13s had decided to join in. Debris began to fall, bouncing off Sylia's armour as the cloud of dust fought against her HUD's clear-view filters. Unsteadily, unable to even detect the far end of the corridor properly through the ECM sub-munitions that the rockets had unleashed, Sylia turned and grabbed the other two; the man was dead, beyond recovery or even a decent burial.

The three of them ran for the exit, praying that they weren't doing the wrong thing.

**Friday 13th June 2042**

"The three of us got out," Sylia concluded. "The escape route was well planning, coming out almost a kilometre away. The boomers didn't bother following us; we guessed that they must have been more concerned with what was going on inside the facility."

Raph waited as she paused. The story had been interesting, delivered somewhat clinically perhaps for what should have been a spy-thriller adventure. Sylia's style of storytelling was... She didn't so much tell a story as dictate it. Pure facts, without any emotion except what you read into it yourself.

For facts though, she was good. Exact details were important, and Raph had had plenty of them. But there were some missing. "What happened to the kids?"

"We don't know," Sylia admitted. "That was the last we saw of Uriel and Metatron. They may have been killed; it's doubtful that the boomers would have spared them. I did some investigating, but nothing turned up. We've operated on the assumption that they are dead."

"What about the third one?" Raph asked after a moment more thought. "You said three lots of research materials... Uriel and Metatron were two of them..."

"Ah," Sylia said, sounding slightly embarrassed. "The third... Linna ran into the third on her way out. A boy, the same age as the other two children. He and his nanny boomer were taking a different route out. They were found by a pair of C-55s, just as Linna turned up. She took out the boomers, but the nanny boomer was destroyed as well. Lacking any other course of action, Linna brought the child out to us when she escaped." Sylia paused for a moment. "That child was called Raphael."

Raph clenched his hands together, knowing that his grip on his mother's hands must be painful. He knew that he had been adopted, that his parents weren't his real parents, so to speak. Overhead, one of the lights stuttered a bit, and Priss growled as she glared up at it, then back down at him. Raph steadied himself, then looked up at Sylia.

"Why are you telling me this now?"

"That's, unfortunately, only half of the story," Sylia admitted. "This is combat recorder footage from last night's boomer rampage," she declared, turning to the TV on the wall and using the remote control to load something up. It was a video file, one that Raph guessed to be from one of the Knight Sabre's hardsuits, showing what amounted to a first person view, overlaid with a HUD showing some kind of tactical indicators.

The video kicked off, leaping into battle against what looked to Raph like a normal C-56 boomer, the standard type produced by GENOM for bodyguard work and the like for the last five years. Also, the most common type seen in boomer rampages.

Something was odd about this boomer though. Raph knew as much as anyone in Mega-Tokyo did about combat boomers; you had to pick things up with the number of rampages that occurred, and sooner or later even the biggest technophobe could tell the common types apart just from watching the news occasionally.

This boomer moved differently. It was subtle; Raph's older training, from his first father, showed him where the boomer was moving when it shouldn't. There was an odd way that it prioritised its attacks differently from a regular C-56, even allowing for the advanced tactical software packages that the C-56 possessed compared to the older C-55s.

Then it happened, and Raph knew why he was being shown this.

"I think that we need to see that once more," Sylia remarked, rewinding the video and playing it again. At the critical second she paused it, leaving a still image on the screen.

The scene was a road bridge over a junction; cars were piled up in the background, with signs of destruction suggesting that the boomer had been fairly vicious in dealing with the cars. In the background an ADP helicopter was just about visible, swinging around over another part of the battle.

The White Hardsuit, showing signs of damage to the armour, was caught in the act of falling back. An arm was raised to point at the boomer, and the muzzle-flare around the wrist suggested that a weapon had been fired.

The boomer took centre stage. Whatever shot had been fired at it by the White Hardsuit had impacted a wall of lightning around the torso, while similar lightning, flaring white with a blue corona, surrounded the right hand and forearm, lashing out to envelope a section of railing which hung, apparently unsupported in the air.

Raph looked down at his own hands, feeling the power flowing through them and spilling over onto his skin as corposant lightning. Above him the lights flickered again, and Priss growled once more, more seriously this time.

"Priss," Sylia said warningly. She turned her attention back to Raph. "I need you to understand this Raphael; Professor Kohima, the man who ran that facility, was a rogue scientist, but he was a genius. A polymath of the highest order. He had revolutionised some aspects of boomer biotechnology single-handedly. He was working, legitimately, on bio-neural networks. He had perfected the technology for downloading knowledge into a Human mind to a far greater degree than anything that I had managed; I've adapted some of his designs and the effectiveness of the process is something like two hundred perfect over what I had achieved previously.

"He was also working on, outside of his office hours, techniques of cloning and genetic engineering of Humans."

Sylia paused again, watching Raph closely. For his part he kept still, thinking it over. "You're saying that..." He trailed off, not sure whether he wanted to even voice his thoughts.

"I'm saying that you, Metatron and Uriel are clones," Sylia replied, not unkindly. "The three of you were flash-grown in exowombs to the age of four. That process took about two months. After that your basic learning and education was basically by downloading information into your brain. Thus, you were fluent in four different languages within a month of being born.

"His goal, as far as I can tell, was to create a new evolution of Humanity. The three of you were meant to be that next step; the abilities that you possess were just the first stage. He gave you all the ability to read people, to pick up body language, to understand people in a way that couldn't otherwise be achieved without some kind of actual mind-reading ability. He gave you a knowledge of languages so that you would be able to communicate.

"On top of those though he modified your DNA. Your ability to read and analyse body language was emphasised by boosting the efficiency of the relevant parts of your brain. Your body handles inactivity without your muscles atrophying better than a normal Human. Similarly, your basic health was improved, your immune system boosted... He gave you the best start that he could.

"The oddest advantage that he decided to give you," Sylia continued, "was the telekinetic abilities. The lightning and EMP activity is just a side-effect of your ability to move things with your mind; Linna and Geoffrey have both told me about this, and kept me informed about your progress, and ensured that you kept quiet about your abilities. Yesterday was the day that I was hoping, that we were all hoping, wouldn't come.

"GENOM has caught up with Professor Kohima. They've managed to produce combat boomers with the same telekinetic abilities that you possess. They might have used his notes, or only found a partial copy like we have. It's taken them nine years to achieve it, but achieve it they have done.

"This means that they know, and have probably known for a while now, what to look for with regards to these abilities. Using your telekinesis in public, or letting people know about it at all, could mean GENOM finding you. And you've been around us, even without knowing who we are in our spare time, to know that this would be a bad thing for you."

Raph nodded slowly. Bits and pieces had started to fit together which hadn't fitted before; things that his mother had said about being careful, about keeping in shape, about not letting people know how well he could read them. Even the drastic change of hair style and colour that had been forced onto him just after his adoption... He tried to smile as that vague blur in his life where people in strange armour had taken him away from his home and then given him to his new mother resolved itself into new clarity.

It was hard to smile though.

"There's another reason that I've told you this," Sylia said after a suitable pause. "One that is only optional; if you don't want to agree to it then I can't force the issue. But I need you to think about it seriously."

Raph felt his parents tense up on either side of him. He looked up at them both, not understanding their sudden concern for a moment, before he began to suspect what it might be.

"I want to offer you a place in the Knight Sabres," Sylia continued, somewhat bluntly.

"Sylia," his mother cried, her tone alone carrying her thoughts on the idea; clearly she wasn't impressed by the idea.

"I'm not asking lightly Linna," Sylia replied, her tone still professional, but with a distinct hint of authority that Raph had rarely heard in it before. "You saw how well our weapons worked against that boomer last night; whatever kind of shield it possessed reduced anything other than a point-blank shot to almost negligible damage. We couldn't have faced two or three like that. We need an edge of our own to counter theirs. And Raphael's telekinetic abilities, combined with those of Priss and Nene-"

"What!" Priss sat upright very sharply at the mention of her name, and Nene looked a bit stunned at being mentioned as well. "I'm not some kind of damned boomeroid like him Sylia," Priss continued before being sharply cut off by Sylia's reply.

"That's enough Priss! Professor Kohima didn't simply conjure these abilities out of thin air; they exist naturally in all Human beings. Some of the tests that I did six months ago confirmed each of our respective strengths in that regard. Linna, Geoffrey and I possess negligible telekinetic strength. You, Nene and Mackie possess a reasonable level of strength. However those abilities are dormant, unlike in Raphael's case. Geoffrey and Mackie have been working on, and have tested, equipment that could be built into a Hardsuit which would allow you access to that talent."

There was a stunned silence from Priss and Nene, and Raph got the feeling that this was the first time that they were hearing about this.

"This is why I can give Raphael the option of joining; his own talent is the most powerful of all of ours, even before using similar equipment in a Hardsuit to boost his potential. But with you and Nene we would at least have a fighting chance against this new technology."

"Couldn't you fit it into your Hardsuit as well Sylia?" Nene asked apprehensively. "I mean... I don't get into the big fights that often..."

"We could fit the equipment into the Hardsuits," Sylia replied, her tone softening somewhat. "But it needs the correct type of person to make it work. You, Priss and Mackie are the right type of people. Linna and I are not."

She turned back to Raph. "I don't need an answer immediately. But I will need one in the near future."

"You're asking me," he said slowly, thinking hard about it as he did, "to join up with a mercenary team that occasionally goes out and gets shot at by combat boomers effectively for the hell of it..."

Sylia cocked her head slightly onto one side, a faint smile touching her lips. "Something like that. The idea of defending the public and trying to take down something as evil as GENOM is, I consider, one of the major bonuses to the job, aside from the money involved."

"Sylia," his mother said, her tone somewhat urgent. "We need to talk."

"I suspected that you would want to talk," Sylia replied. "Would you prefer that Raphael left the room, or that we did?"

His mother paused, and Raph glanced up at her, seeing the tightness in her expression. "I'll say it here and now; you're talking about sending my son into fights that might get him killed. What kind of parent do you think I am? That we are?" she added, gesturing at his father, who nodded in agreement.

"It wouldn't be straight away," Sylia replied, her tone even with maybe an almost subliminal hint of sympathy in it. "It would take at least a month or two in order to get a Hardsuit put together and to modify Priss and Nene's Hardsuits. In that time he would have training for combat, practise alongside each of us-"

"Like hell he would," Priss objected, coming to her feet. "Sylia, you can't be serious about letting him join the Knight Sabres."

"Why not Priss? You, Linna and Nene were only a couple of years older than Raphael when you each joined up, and he already has more combat training, admittedly for sports and the like, than any of you did. I'm offering to ensure that he is as fully trained as possible-"

"It's not his damned training that I'm worried about," Priss protested loudly. "I don't care if he has some weird powers that make him special. He's not even Hum-"

"Enough!" Sylia's voice overrode Priss's very sharply, her expression stern. "You of all of us should know not to judge people's Humanity based solely on what they are made from."

Priss' expression went blank for a moment, then became suffused with rage. "You dare bring her up!"

"Only because you are being unreasonable," Sylia replied, standing so that she was level with Priss once more. "I've tolerated your attitude towards Raphael for this long, and so have Linna and Geoffrey, but you have no right to judge him based on where he came from. I can't imagine that asking you to apologise will get any results, so I'll simply ask you to leave this meeting if you can't bring yourself to be civil about him."

Priss glared at Sylia for a moment longer, then turned and stormed out of the room, somehow contriving to slam the fire door behind her as she did.

"I'm sorry about that," Sylia said to the room in general. "I thought that she would be over it by now..." Turning back to Raph, she sighed. "As I said, I can't force the issue. If you don't want to join then I can't make you. And if your parents aren't willing to have you join then I can't let you; I'm not enough of a monster to completely override their opinions on this matter. But I do need to make the offer, because we will need the help sooner or later."


	2. Chapter 2

**Saturday 14th June 2042**

**Apartment 437, Damascan Tower, Zhandou District**

Linna had been standing by the window, staring out at the city without seeing it, when Geoffrey left to do some shopping. She was still there, in the same position, still not seeing, when he came back half an hour later.

He sighed, silently. Part of him was amazed; Linna was a creature of beauty and grace, athletic and mobile. Normally she didn't stop moving for anything, but he had learnt that when she wanted to be still she could do it, keeping perfectly still for hours at a time if the mood took her.

Putting the shopping away, Geoffrey came to stand behind her, not touching her or saying anything, but simply standing there, waiting for her to be aware of him.

After a couple of minutes she seemed to come out of it, shaking herself a bit and turning to look at Geoffrey. He noted the marks on her cheeks where tears had been and the redness in her eyes that spoke of the possibility of more.

"You've been thinking about Sylia's offer," he said, prompting rather than asking.

She nodded mutely, reaching out and drawing him closer to her. "I keep thinking..." She paused, biting back a sob. "I keep thinking about how badly things could go. I kept dreaming of Raph being killed by a boomer, by Largo, by the Norvian, by one of the Aswind, by..." She broke off again, not bothering to hide the sob.

"Sylia wouldn't let that happen to him," Geoffrey assured her. "I know how well she looks after all of you."

"That's the problem," Linna objected. "I've nearly died three times in the last year alone. All of the training I've had, all of the equipment, and I nearly died, and I can't bear the thought of Raph being put into those circumstances..." She trailed off, sobbing.

"If you're that worried, then Sylia won't force the issue," Geoffrey reminded her gently. "She assured us of that."

"I know," Linna replied. "But... I know Sylia. She wouldn't have asked Raph if she didn't think it was necessary. She's really worried about these new boomers, a lot more than she was showing."

"Then she'll take it seriously," Geoffrey insisted once more. "If she can't risk ignoring something like this..."

"Even if she does something will come along... Something that we can't handle. It's happened before and we've escaped because we've been lucky, or someone else got involved, or something happened to go our way. We can't rely on that forever and... I can't let Raph go into that..."

Geoffrey clasped her to him as she started to cry again. Gently he held her, letting her get it out of her system. All the time she was crying he tried to keep his own feelings at bay, not daring to let them out yet, lest it make things worse.

After a few minutes, Linna had calmed enough that Geoffrey felt it safe to mount a counter-argument.

"Look, even if this was an option, it'll be at least a month from what Sylia was saying until a Hardsuit could be ready. That's a month for things to change, for GENOM to decide that the technology isn't going to be worth the effort. Maybe Sylia will find someone else to take his place and recruit someone new to join the team; I know that she's been looking for potential members for the last couple of years." He kept quiet about when precisely that had started; there had, at one point, been talk of Geoffrey himself taking up a Hardsuit, and of two or three people joining the team when Priss had been laid up for five weeks. "Besides," he added, "you can't be sure that Raph will even accept the offer."

Linna gave a bitter laugh. "I can. He's good at reading people, but not as great at hiding his own thoughts. The way that he avoided talking about last night... The way that he was watching me think about it... He wants this. He might not know it yet, but he wants it."

Temporarily stuck for an argument to use, Geoffrey simply resorted to hugging Linna to him for a few moments more, until she seemed to recover something of her self-control and pulled away a bit. She straightened herself out, determinedly putting the matter under wraps. It was only as she was turning to go that she paused, seeming to think of something.

"You know... It's just occurred to me that this was damned selfish of me," she said without turning around. "I mean... I'm getting all worried about Raph being out there and me not being able to protect him... And here's you always getting stuck at home for the last nine years while I went off to get myself killed and you couldn't do a thing about it."

Geoffrey smiled at Linna's back. "The thought had occurred to me over the years," he replied, forcing enough of a jovial tone into his voice to tell her that he forgave her.

Once she had gone he sat down on the sofa, putting his head into his hands and trying to keep his own tears quiet enough that Linna wouldn't hear them and come back.

**Zhandou Green Zone**

Raph had left the apartment early in the day, needing time to think. He'd left his phone on, but hadn't answered it the few times that it had rung. His parents hadn't called, but he hadn't expected them to. They would give him room to think.

His friends wouldn't though; he'd had to turn off his phone's sky-eye so that they couldn't track the GPS signal from it to find him. They still tried calling him though.

He didn't know quite what he felt about the previous day's revelations. The news that he was different wasn't a surprise. He'd known that all of his life. How exactly he was different was something of a surprise though.

He couldn't quite get his head around it. On one level it was perfectly normal; it was what he was and there wasn't much point in getting excited about it. On the other hand...

One of the park's various holoscreens lit up as he approached, preparatory to providing some kind of tourist information or a news channel. The POST image showed the GENOM logo in amongst the images that it brought up, a not too subtle reminder of their presence.

He'd never understood until yesterday why his mother hated GENOM so much. Now, knowing that they had raided his first home... That them even finding out who he was could bring them down on his family... His mother hadn't even been able to buy things with GENOM logos on them out of protective camouflage, and now he realised that it was because they reminded her of how easily he could be taken from her.

The holoscreen flickered for a second, and Raph hastily put a stop to those thoughts; he couldn't afford to lose control in public, particularly somewhere that he might easily be singled out. If GENOM knew about the EMP aspect of his telekinesis then they would be on the lookout for such disruptions. Of course, Mega-Tokyo was a massive place, and it had been nine and a half years...

Then again... His mother had described Quincy as being old a decade ago. And yet he seemed unchanged since the early days of the Knight Sabres. How long would someone who didn't seem to age be willing to keep looking for something that might not exist any more? Especially if old enemies like the Knight Sabres were involved.

That brought up the next question. He had known, even without what his mother and father had said yesterday that they were against him joining the Knight Sabres. And he had to admit that the idea of going out and fighting rogue boomers, occasional terrorists and the like wasn't something that he especially wanted to do.

The other Knight Sabres, he knew, had their reasons for join what they did; his mother had explained that after Priss had left and they had all gone home. Sylia and Mackie's father, Priss' boyfriend, Nene's colleagues at the ADP... His mother had eventually admitted her own reason – the money had been the initial reason, before the death of a friend at the hands of GENOM's assassin boomer – while his father had eventually provided his own reason as loyalty to his mother.

Raph though... He had the same reason his father did, but his father didn't go out in a Hardsuit and fight boomers. While GENOM might have destroyed the life he was born with – he considered whether "incepted" was a more appropriate term than "conceived" – he would actually be putting himself in even greater danger by going out in a Hardsuit; they would know that he was still out there and would start looking for him.

Even so, the idea of his mother and her friends going out while he sat back and did nothing... That didn't sit well with him.

He had resolved, after some thought, to pursue his father's path with the Knight Sabres, doing what he could without getting into the fights, when he heard someone calling him.

Attention to detail was important. And because his attention had wavered he had allowed himself to walk down familiar paths without thinking about it; this section of the park was one that his friends would have expected to find him in, which they apparently had done.

Troy and Lin were arguably his best friends at school. Certainly his circle of friends included few he hung out with as often as this pair of near-misfits.

Claiming descent from some kind of South African ruler during the mid-twentieth century, Troy insisted that his parents had been kicked out of the country following a coup. Raph hadn't bothered trying to look up details to disprove it; Troy believed it seriously enough that it would have been almost criminal to shatter any illusions, if illusions there were. His lineage gave him rough, naturally tanned skin with black hair. His accent was, to his parent's distress, solidly Japanese, despite their efforts.

Lin had come over to Mega-Tokyo only a couple of years ago when her parents got a promotion that required them to move to the city. She had settled into the Japanese lifestyle well, her Chinese ancestry meaning that she blended into the native populace somewhat better than Troy did. She still carried more of a Chinese accent however, and stumbled occasionally on her Japanese.

"We've been trying to call you for hours," Troy complained as the pair of them jogged to a stop beside Raph. "We were meant to be going down to the Rat Race, remember?"

Raph nodded slowly, summoning a smile. "I needed some time to myself," he admitted. "I found out some stuff yesterday... About my... Parents."

"Oh come on, what could be that-" Troy began, before Lin jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow.

"He's adopted," she hissed at Troy. "He means his birth parents." She turned a smile on Raph as Troy managed to look enlightened. "So... Was it good news?"

"Not good, but not bad. As such," Raph replied vaguely. "It's going to take some thinking about. I don't want to talk about it," he added quickly, lest they get ideas. He didn't feel up to dodging questions right now. "The Rat Race will still be open won't it? What will they have on by the time we get there?"

"From what we saw when we were down there earlier it's going to be Dace Lura all day," Lin replied, somewhat dismissively. "Which is fine if you're into his style, but he just comes across as showy to me."

"That's part of his magic," Troy insisted, and Raph tuned the conversation out somewhat as the three of them headed down to the Rat Race; their differing choices of styles in the games was probably the most serious point of contention – mostly good natured – between the three of them.

The Rat Race was one place that his mother probably wouldn't approve of him going. Not that GENOM had any influence down there, but rather because of the sort of things that went on down there.

The somewhat dingy entrance to the Rat Race was four levels down from the park; one of the reasons that the park was a favourite place of his. It was one of several entrances to the tunnels and caverns that had acquired the name of the Rat Race over the years.

Originally the place had apparently been some kind of survival shelter, though Raph didn't believe that; there were five more levels below it at least before you got into the Underhive, and any survival shelter would have been built into something more solid than the remains of a supermarket carpark (Raph had found the signs indicating different floors, not to mention a still functional parking meter on one of his trips).

Now, it had a kind of decayed civility to it, a sense of tidy evil. Drug dealers and the like hung out there, but regular ADP patrols and the patrols by Sentinels kept things safe enough that a trio of teenagers could visit without seeing anything worse than was regularly reported on the news and without any actual danger to themselves.

The three of them headed past the Sentinel on duty at the entrance, not even fazed by the black armoured form which swept a merciless gaze over them. They wound their way past a market before they headed into what Raph always thought of as being the Rat Race (the rest of it being more or less background noise to him).

The centre took up about a quarter of the Rat Race in all, but had managed to claim some of the larger areas, or widen them out as it did. Three large circular areas made up the main arenas, with smaller arenas set off around the outside of the three main ones. The largest, set in the middle of the centre, was surrounded by tiers of stadium seats while each of the other arenas, even the smaller ones, had it's own ring of seats or observation platforms. One major rule: there were no private matches.

Raph stepped into the dimly lit interior, passing the main booth without incident; the arfid in his phone marked him as a regular with a valid subscription to the centre. Troy's phone bleeped at him, the subtle tone that indicated that he had been charged for entry. Lin grinned at him as he went red; he'd been saying that he was going to top up his membership fees for over a month now.

Without hesitation Raph led the way to the main arena, eschewing the packed front rows and climbing the stairs to the top level of the seating and settling himself into an empty seat where he had a reasonably good view of the arena itself.

The arena was laid out in a circular form, fifteen metres across. Around the inside edge twelve circles, each two a half metres wide, had been marked out; at present only two on opposite sides of the arena were lit up. Within those two circles stood the challengers. Dace Lura was on Raph's left, while it took a few seconds to recognise Isabel Carmine on the opposite side.

Dace was Caucasian, well tanned, with long brown hair tied back in a queue which came down to his shoulder blades. His interface suit fitted perfectly; a custom job that was prominently devoid of any kind of brand marking aside from the manufacturer's logo on the wrists. A stunning black basecoat with gold panelling and red highlights around the edges made it distinctive from the usual two colour designs with their basic colour patterns that rented suits had.

Isabel meanwhile was an oriental beauty; she had been a favourite for a while an equal to Dace with her own custom interface suit in green and yellow with a red serpent's tail starting on her left wrist and winding its way up and around her back before the head of the snake settled itself just below her breasts. The logo of the Cobra Industrial Group was emblazoned on her back and down the outside of both legs. Her black hair had been cut short, giving her a tomboy appearance until your attention when down to the snake's head and then got distracted on its way back up.

Between the two of them a veritable fog of holographic colours was swimming around. Sharp lines and curves delineated the mist, but it was the colours that really mattered; even at a glance Raph could tell that it was a close match.

He flicked on his phone, the screen lighting up already connected to the local datafeed from the arena. He whistled in appreciation; the match had been going on for nearly twenty minutes already, and neither challenger looked like backing down soon.

"Excuse me, is this seat taken?"

Raph looked up sharply at the intrusion, taking in the man standing over him at a glance. He was Japanese, Raph guessed, and pushing sixty. He dressed in everyday clothes that had an almost gi-like simplicity to them. His hair was mostly grey, and limited to a fringe around the back of his head and a goatee.

There was something about the way that the man looked at him though; Raph knew at a glance that this wasn't a chance meeting, that the man recognised him. But, he perceived, there was no immediate sign of hostility. Not that he didn't have to force himself to relax when he saw the calm and measured stance of the man.

"No, help yourself," Raph said, relaxing more realistically now, allowing the tension to drain from his muscles.

"Thank you," the man replied in a somewhat reedy voice that was barely audible over the cheering from the crowd. "This seems quite a popular sport," the man said as Raph tried to turn back to the match. "Could you explain it for me?"

Raph hesitated for a vital fraction of a second, trying to read the man and work out whether he was joking or not; this was hardly a random place to visit, given the entry fee that you needed to pay to get in. But maybe the guy had just wandered in out of ennui or something.

And so taking the question at face value, Raph began to explain his favourite sport.

Kousentou. There were a dozen levels that the game was played on, and a hundred variants on the rules to accommodate different types of players and their levels of skill.

At its most basic level, the players were required to stay in their circle. The game's sensors, including those built into the interface suit, interpreted and translated movements into the patterns of colours and symbols and the movements within the cloud.

"The idea is to dominate the cloud," Raph explained. "But because two people can use the same colour, you have to be careful how you play and keep watching them; you can get your half of the cloud just right and then they throw in a move that changes their colour and suddenly they've claimed your half.

"The game recognises most forms of martial arts," Raph continued as Dace executed a pair of well-placed karate kicks in the air, "and it can recognise counters, blocks, stuff like that." Isabel had caught both kicks, deflecting them both with an Aikido counter before responding with a sweep of her own that Dace leapt over. "It can even recognise throws and stuff, and if you don't counter them that can lose you lots of points."

"It seems rather complicated just for some martial arts," the man replied.

"It's not just the martial arts," Raph assured him. "It's any style of martial arts, including some rules about the use of weapons. Plus the difficulty can be adjusted so that it uses anything from a cloud with a full spectrum which responds in real-time down to a flat surface in monochrome that is keyed to give beginners a decent time to think. There's even a league set up just for people who do kata or dance moves. There are people who don't even watch the players but just appreciate the art in the cloud, others who just come to see the styles of fighting..."

Dace chose that moment to execute a flying upper-cut which Isabel was totally unprepared for. The screen on Raph's phone showed a silhouette of the two figures as if they had actually made contact rather than being over ten metres apart, and most of the cloud abruptly changed to Dace's red.

Isabel tried to recover, but there wasn't much that she could do about it all; with that kind of damage it took Dace less than a minute to push Isabel back, warding off the few attempts that she made to recover.

Raph cheered along with the rest of the crowd as the cloud flashed and froze in place, the four-faced polygonal head of the Ringmaster AI appearing over the cloud and trying to announce Dace's victory over the noise.

"He seems quite good," the man commented once the noise died down.

"He's very good," Raph enthused, still fighting off the edge of wariness about this man. He held up his phone, bringing up Dace's stats on the screen. "He's easily world champion material. Fifth in the rankings in Mega-Tokyo. He even plays pure-Human grade because he's only got a couple of bits of cyberware."

"Do you play this game?" the man asked, his tone casual. Raph was immediately on edge at the subtle undertones that went with that question though.

"I'm not too bad. I'm a ranked player in the Junior League, in the top hundred. Another few years and I'll be challenging Dace for a position."

The man didn't look particularly impressed, or even react that much to this news. He sat considering the arena where Dace and Isabel were bowing to each other in the middle before heading out into the changing rooms on either side of the arena. "I suppose that you wouldn't indulge an old man and try a game or two," he said eventually, still watching the arena.

Raph considered for a moment. That was no simple request to make; setting up a game could require booking one of the arenas hours or days in advance sometimes. Unless this man had booked that far in advance...

There was also the way that he said it...

"You've booked already?" he asked, forcing his tone to be light and casual.

"I could probably find us an arena," the man replied, his tone equally casual, but with a layer to it that Raph didn't like. "If you're willing."

Raph considered for perhaps half a second, then nodded. "You're on."

The man cracked a faint smile, looking at Raph as he did. "You'll give an old man a chance to get a head start," he said as he stood and moved arthritically towards the stairs.

"Raph, did you just challenge some OAP to a match?" Lin asked suspiciously. "That's a bit... vicious, isn't it?"

"He's not just some OAP," Raph assured her, standing and holding up his phone, lining up the screen on the back of the man's head. As he turned on the stairs Raph managed to catch his profile in a snapshot and loaded the photo into the centre's database. With his standing as a regular contender he had access to the player records and could use a photo to search those records for his opponents.

The search took a few seconds before it came back with half a dozen matches. Raph dismissed all but one of them immediately.

"Here we are," Raph declared, holding up the phone so that Troy and Lin could see the screen. "Shinji Zhu. Started playing just after I did. His career average is lower than mine, but for the games that he's played he's good; he just doesn't play tournaments that often."

"So how come you didn't recognise him?" Troy asked. "I mean, if he's that good..."

"His stats are good," Raph admitted. "But I tend to challenge people who I've seen play. He's never used one of the main arenas, and he's kept quite quiet about it all. He's damned good though."

"Better than you?" Lin asked.

"About equal to judge from these scores," Raph replied, checking the player stats again. "But he probably hasn't challenged anyone of my level before now." He flipped his phone shut and smiled. "Easy-easy," he declared. "Let's go and see what he's set up."

As he headed down the stairs Raph let the smile slip a bit. He had read the stats right, and knew what they meant. He hadn't lied about what they showed either, since Lin at least could read them as well as he could. But he hadn't told them everything. He was worried by the prospect of this match.

Shinji was waiting for them next to one of the counters, a faint smile on his lips. "We're booked into the Inari arena," he announced, indicating the signs bearing the stylised image of a fox. "We've got twenty minutes to warm up. I hope that you don't mind the rush."

"I'll try to keep up with you," Raph assured him, forcing a smile as he did.

**Lady 633 Building**

Mackie looked around his sister's apartment, trying to gauge her mood from what had been left around. It was a skill that he had picked up from living with her for so long without parents to keep an eye on them. There was a kind of code to it.

In this case she was drinking tea, but had finished it and left the cup and saucer out. Her choice of reading material was magazines, specifically relating to fashion other than what she sold (she always kept a few of them downstairs in the shop and recycled the old copies after checking them herself). Rental details about the neighbouring buildings had been left on the coffee table next to the cup and magazines. The television, when he glanced at it, was showing that it was tuned for a news channel; Sylia had been watching global politics.

All of this told Mackie that Sylia was in a pensive mood, possibly trying to distract herself, and that she hadn't managed to shake the mood. He could even guess the source of the mood, though that wasn't too much trouble at present.

"Sylia?" he called out.

"In here Mackie," came her reply from the office adjoining the living room.

Mackie's gaze swept over the office as he entered, and he kept from smiling at his correct deductions of his sister's mood with ease; he didn't want to be upsetting her at this point, and appearing to take the situation less than seriously might do it. This was a side to his sister that the other Knight Sabres never saw; the pensive one that had started to turn up in the last few years, as age and injury started to tell on the Knight Sabre's performance.

She was looking over some of the combat recorder footage from the boomer rampage again, with notes laid out on the tabletop in front of her about different boomer types, about the new designs. There were GENOM documents and blueprints that Mackie had no idea how Sylia had obtained, but which she evidently had done.

"We need a new edge," Sylia announced, not taking her eyes off the screen. "Even with Priss and Nene using the new telekinetic enhancements we won't be able to fight against boomers like that on anywhere near the same level that we can against conventional boomers."

"You could set me up with a Hardsuit as well," Mackie offered. "I mean, I've got the same rating as Nene, just about." That was just about true, but it involved fiddling with the numbers a bit to make it so. In any event both he and Nene were a couple of levels behind Priss; Sylia hadn't mentioned it the day before, but Priss' rating was estimated at nearly twice that of Mackie's, assuming that she was willing to make it happen.

"You would be more use in the utility suit," Sylia said dismissively. "We need you as pilot, mechanic, specialist... We can't afford to lose those roles in the field."

"So what about new recruits? I mean, Linna and Geoff might not like the idea of Raph getting involved but there must be people out there who aren't going to be tied down like that."

"I've considered people," Sylia admitted. "But every time I run up against the same problems: their background, their willingness to help, the chances of them keeping a secret... I got lucky with the other three; Nene had no one else to go to, and Linna and Priss had just the right level of strength, skill and reason to join without the chances of handing the rest of us over to GENOM or the ADP. Nowadays, everyone I can track down is involved in something, sponsored by someone... I need specific people, the right kind of people, and... We can't afford to take chances, because that could be as bad as just letting GENOM know who we are."

Mackie considered. He knew about some of the issues regarding finding people to join the Knight Sabres; those reasons were why there had been no additions to the team over the last twelve years. But there had been people who knew about the Knight Sabres. "What about Leon? Priss says that he's been asking about us again, particularly after Priss came home with a broken arm a couple of months back. I mean, after this long he has to be safe from a security standpoint."

"Oh, he's safe there," Sylia admitted. "But it's bad enough with Nene having to vanish from work periodically and rewrite her schedule to cover it. Two ADP officers, particularly if one of them is front-line like officer McNichol, would be too many."

"Well that covers most of Nene's friends then," Mackie admitted. "I can think of a couple of people I know-"

"It's not just that though," Sylia cut him off softly. "This new telekinetic ability that GENOM can equip boomers with means that they have an undeniable advantage over us. Even with you, Priss and Nene all working together, we wouldn't be a match for three or four of these new boomers; the shields that they can generate are simply too powerful for conventional weapons to handle. We need people with this talent, and you can't test for it without specialised equipment."

"So... You can only find out if people are suitable if they join the Knight Sabres." Mackie paused, considering this. "Isn't there some way that it could be worked in as part of a regular test somehow?"

"It's more than just a regular test," Sylia replied, sounding resigned suddenly. "Even for the other Knight Sabres – and let's face it we all go through a rather detailed physical examination every couple of months if I can help it – this was something unusual. It involves not just a blood test but a detailed check of the activity in certain parts of the brain and the strength of certain neural links throughout the body. Now most people are not going to go through a test like that without good reason. The technique is actually adapted from certain kinds of test for neural conditions, but most of those conditions are degenerative and no one going through one of those tests will be a suitable candidate."

Mackie considered this as well. The test, which he hadn't understood the purpose of initially, was very definitely something that required a bit of explanation. Slipping that past most people, which you could do with things like the standard physicals, wasn't going to be possible without a lot of complications.

"It wouldn't be so bad if I had seen this coming," Sylia continued, not actually speaking to Mackie now, but rather vocalising her feelings and thoughts at a useful recipient. "We've known about this for eight years, seen how Raph was progressing, known that GENOM was interested in this technology and probably possessed a working model of it from the computer records at least. And then nothing. We haven't seen anything for eight years, and then when we do we, who had an advantage right from the start, are caught off-guard."

That was, Mackie realised, what was particularly eating his sister at this point. Most of the time she could get ahead of enemies: predicting where the Sky Hoppers would strike next and lying in wait; working out Largo's plan in advance and thwarting his efforts to capture the Silver Urchin and capturing it herself; putting an end to the Norvian (though Mackie had a feeling that the celebrations there may have been premature).

Overall, Sylia had grown used to being one step ahead of everyone, a trait that she had forced herself to develop following the disastrous first encounter with Largo. She had forced herself to push the development of the Hardsuits further and faster after that, pushing the Knight Sabre's intelligence assets so that she knew more and more of what was going on... Somehow, this had slipped past her.

Mackie was about to try to console her further when there was a bleep from her computer and Sylia looked at it sharply. She tapped at the trackpad and the screen lit up showing what appeared to be an RSS bulletin.

"What is it?" Mackie asked, curious as to what could have got Sylia this interested.

"It's from the kousentou centre in the Rat Race," Sylia replied absentmindedly. "This is... Interesting," she added. Without looking she reached over and dialled a number into the phone, apparently from memory, flicking it onto speaker as she did.

There were three rings before the call was answered. "Yeah? What is it?" The voice was familiar to Mackie, and the distortion on it suggested a very enclosed space to Mackie, such as a motorcycle helmet.

"Good afternoon to you too Priss," Sylia replied somewhat coolly. "Can you talk for a moment?"

"Sure," Priss replied, her tone not exactly happy about the prospect. "What do you want?"

"I just wanted to know whether you had spoken to anyone about Raphael since yesterday," Sylia said, her tone far from casual.

"No," came the emphatic response. "Why would I?"

"That's what I want to know," Sylia replied.

"Look, what even makes you think that I did?" Priss asked, the roar of her motorbike's engine managing to find its way past the scrubbing on her helmet's Bluetooth as she revved it.

"The fact that Raphael was just challenged to a match at kousentou by a certain Shinji Zhu. Perhaps you know the name," she added after Priss didn't immediately respond.

"Okay, so I talked to Shinji last night. I didn't mention the kid though."

"But he came up anyway," Sylia guessed. Mackie remembered the one time that he had met Shinji Zhu; the old man had been remarkably perceptive, with quiet impressive deductive skills. "You probably denied it, and now..."

"Look, the kid isn't in any danger," Priss interjected. "Kousentou isn't even physical combat."

"Nonetheless, I am concerned by his interest in Raphael." She sighed. "I suppose it can't hurt," she announced, not sounding convinced.

**Kousentou Centre, The Rat Race**

Raph stretched, feeling the way that the interface suit slid over his skin, revelling in the sense of freedom that went with it.

The first time he had worn one of these he had expected it to be something like the wetsuit that he had worn when his parents had taken him diving during his first couple of years with them. The restricted feeling that had gone with that had been almost painful to Raph.

The interface suit on the other hand slid across the skin; it was a constant tension rather than bunching up and separating as the wetsuit had a habit of doing. The sensors built into it were unobtrusive, the only major sign of them being a layer of slightly thicker padding down the back (for the ostensive purpose of padding against impacts) where the processors and wireless where located.

Standing upright, Raph checked himself out in the changing room's mirror, before stepping out into the arena.

This was one of the smaller arenas; it only came out at ten metres across (experiments with smaller ones had led to more issues than they solved), with a ring of six circles for contestants to stand in around the outside. Two of the rings were lit up already, on opposite sides of the arena.

Raph stepped into the nearest one, watching as Shinji stepped out of the changing room opposite and into his own circle.

The older man was dressed in an interface suit as well, but his own was a custom one rather than borrowed like the one that Raph was using. It was blue for the most part, with red highlights; not much of a custom job, but definitely not rented.

They bowed formally, and Raph used the movement to focus his awareness, filtering out everything that didn't matter to the match. It had startled him how hard it was for other people to do this without practise, and he'd been warned by his mother to keep it quiet very early on. Now that Sylia had explained where he came from... That extra ability to focus made sense now.

When they both came up his world extended as far as the edge of the arena, centring on the man on the far side of it and the grey cloud that had shimmered into existence across the floor between them. He threw the first punch, taking a half step forwards with his right leg as his right fist drew back at his hip and then came up and forwards, spinning to face downwards and carrying his entire upper body into the move for added force.

The move was blocked, but gave him a good starting advantage: a wedge of brilliant red stabbing into the air in front of him which was neutralised just short of the wall of blue sprinkled with green icons that the block had brought up.

It was an obvious move; he had ensured that Shinji was on the defensive, beginning with a solid wall in front of him. That wall could be reinforced, but pushing it further forward would mean sacrificing its strength or building the whole thing up. Either of those worked for Raph.

Apparently Shinji was happy to allow his defences to be potentially compromised, as he threw a sharp left-block-right-block-punch combo which Raph countered with a couple of kicks and a block of his own. The combo reinforced the defences on either side of Shinji, forcing Raph to attack down the centre; in some people that wouldn't have been a smart move, but Raph guessed that this was deliberate as it forced attacks to come by the shortest possible, and most obvious, route.

Determined not to be outdone there, Raph threw in a couple of attacks, pushing hard to expand his initial attack vector while also throwing an attack off to the side; indirect attacks were something that only the pros would normally use, but Raph had pulled them off a couple of times before. If nothing else it cost him little and would provide something else that Shinji needed to defend against.

**Apartment 437, Damascan Tower, Zhandou District**

The phone had been ringing for a good thirty seconds by the time Linna reached it. Whoever it was had managed to bypass the normal voicemail timeout, which meant that it was from a limited number of people right from the start. When she saw Sylia's number she nearly hesitated, but answered anyway.

"Linna," Sylia said in greeting, somewhat businesslike to Linna's ears. "Are you free to talk?" The video image showed Sylia at her desk in the office that she kept next to her living room; Linna had only been in there a couple of times in her career in the Knight Sabres, but recognised it despite this.

"There's just the two of us here," Linna assured Sylia. "What's up?"

"I'm sending you a link," Sylia replied, somewhat obliquely. "Take a look at it will you?"

A web link icon appeared in the bottom corner of the screen and Linna tapped at it with a frown. She didn't recognise the address, but it was fairly complicated; not just a link to a page but to a very specific page several layers down a hierarchy.

The page that came up was a quite impressive piece of work, and it took Linna a few seconds to understand it properly. The centre image was a video feed of a kousentou match; she had seen those often enough and even participated in one or two so that she knew what she was talking about when coaching people at the gym. The two sides of the page were taken up with player statistics, including quite a lot of data which was being pulled from the interface suit and a list of moves that had been performed.

Only once she had consciously processed all of this did Linna finally work out who the person on the left was.

"Raph!"

"Yes, Raphael," Sylia agreed from the view-within-view that she had been relegated to. "I take it that you weren't aware of how good he is at kousentou?"

"He mentioned that he played sometimes... I didn't think..." She watched as on the screen her son threw a series of attacks and counters. "I didn't realise that he was that good," she admitted.

"At the bottom of the screen there's a tab for overall stats," Sylia indicated. "Bring that up and see what it says."

Linna touched the tab and watched the stats change from game moves to physical stats. Reflex speed, overall strength, perception rating, endurance... "Those are the statistics you use for our training," she said slowly.

"Similar to them. The ones that I use are more complete because they test things that kousentou cannot effectively test such as actual arm and leg strength or providing an accurate idea of perceptual rating. But these are similar enough to get an idea from," she admitted. "What do you notice?"

Suspecting where this was going, Linna looked over the stats, then turned as Geoffrey came into the room. "Raph's down in the Rat Race," she said, indicating the screen. "In a kousentou match."

Geoffrey came over and looked at the screen. "These numbers..."

"They're good," Linna admitted. "They're above the level that Nene used to operate at when we took on Largo..."

"He's actually fighting as if he was at level six or seven right now," Sylia chimed in. "Hello Geoffrey."

"Sylia," he responded, tight-lipped. "Did you set this up?"

"No, I didn't," Sylia replied. "I had considered it, but dismissed the idea as antagonistic. Someone else appears to have taken the initiative though; Shinji Zhu is Priss' maternal uncle. She denies having mentioned Raph to him recently, but I know Shinji well enough to guess that he worked out what she was angry about because of the direction of her silence. Not knowing the full situation, he's decided to investigate for himself. Ultimately he's not doing any real harm; he's just trying to work out what his niece is angry about."

"Will he..."

"There's nothing for him to find out in a kousentou match," Sylia assured the pair of them. "Raphael is a mature young man with excellent self-control." She looked off to the side as something on both ends of the conversation bleeped expectantly. "As you are about to see..."

On the screen Linna saw that both players were about evenly matched in the cloud; Raph had built up a stronger offensive, but Shinji's defences were very solid. The older man was keeping up his defensive very effectively, and she didn't see what Raph was going to be able to do to beat it.

When he stopped attacking and went into a ready stance, she was confused; standing there like that was simply asking for trouble as Shinji would be able to attack with impunity. His stance shifted slowly though, his hands positioned as if holding a ball between them as they came down to his hip. He stood in hidari hanmi, his left foot forwards and back foot behind and perpendicular to it. As his hands came down to his right hip his side of the cloud began to glow faintly, acquiring a shimmering that Linna didn't recognise from any of her experience with the game.

Abruptly, with a sharp kiai, Raph brought his hands up in front of him, arms straight out towards Shinji, his palms pointing at his opponent and his fingers held as if ready to claw something. At his kiai the cloud in front of him flashed, a brilliant beam of light blasting towards Shinji and shattering his defences in a single blow. Almost the entire arena flared to Raph's colour and icons in that single instant, and he spun out of his finished stance, delivering a sharp kick in the direction of each of the offending areas.

"What just happened?" Linna asked. "Did he just-"

"There was no telekinesis involved," Sylia assured her. "The computer running the game can recognise a variety of moves, and one of the ones that was added early on was the hadouken. Basically the computer uses the interface suit to work out how centred someone is; if they make the right actions and have centred themselves properly, they can perform a hadouken." She paused significantly. "There are professionals who have never managed to throw a hadouken in their entire career despite hours of practise. Raphael did it on his second go and is still the youngest person in the world to have thrown one."

Linna and Geoffrey exchanged a long look as the screen began to show replays of different moments within the game. Neither of them wanted to think about what they had seen, but they knew that it would be hard to deny.

Fighting was in their son's blood.


End file.
